1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to music synthesizers, and more particularly to synthesizers based on digital signal processing in response to sound generating programs, and to methods and work stations for creating such sound generating programs.
2. Description Of the Related Art
There is a growing trend in the music synthesizer industry to synthesize sounds using sound generating programs executed by digital signal processors. The sound generating programs are based upon computational models of musical instruments, the human voice, or other sound source. Thus, the developer of a sound generating program typically first defines a computational model of the sound source he/she desires to create, and then writes a computer program to execute the model. Prior art examples of such sound generating programs are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,984,276, invented by Julius O. Smith, entitled "DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING USING WAVE GUIDE NETWORKS".
However, the typical user of a music synthesizer may not be skilled in programming digital signal processors. Thus, the trend towards developing sound generating programs has been hampered by the long learning curve required for musicians who desire to use this technique.
Also, in the development of a computational model of a source of sound, often involves trial and error. The process of trial and error is quite difficult when in order to modify a computational model, one must go to the source code of a computer program and modify it, recompile the modified computer program and execute it, before the developer of the model can listen to the results of the modification.
Finally, the sound generating programs which are developed using the prior art techniques, are unique to a single system. Thus, when the developer of the sound generating program wants to execute his/her model on a different system, a completely new program must be written.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system for creating models of musical instruments or other sources of sound for use with music synthesizers which is powerful, easy to use, and results in models that are portable across a number of systems.